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1916 

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' Songs of Godhead 



By 
SAMUEL HENRY MARCUS 



Author of 
The Passing Singer and Other Poems" 



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STRATFORD PUBLISHING CO. 

BOSTON 



Copyright, 1916, hy Isaac Goldberg 



Other publications of the Stratford Publishing Co: 



"Sir Wm. S. Gilbert: A Study in Modern Satire 
and The Gilbert-Sullivan Operas," by Isaac Gold- 
berg. (Cloth, pp. 156, $1.00.) 

"The Passing Singer, and Other Poems," by Sam- 
uel Henry Marcus. (Cloth, pp. 116, $1.00.) 

"Giuseppe, and Laughter "Wins," Fairy Tales for 
Workingmen's Children, by Henry T. Schnittkind. 
(Paper, pp. 90, $.25.) 



For information, address The Alpine Press, 32 
Oliver St., Boston, Mass. 



Songs of Godhead 



By 
SAMUEL HENRY MARCUS 



Author of 
The Passing Singer and Other Poems" 



£0 



STRATFORD PUBLISHING CO. 
BOSTON 






©CI.A435437 

JUL 28 1916 



Prelude 



Prelude 

He who chooses the Road to Godhead 

Walks with suffering and sorrow 

As fools and children walk with laughter. 

For the way is over towns and nations, 

And he walks with the exaltation of a seer-king, 

For his way is over prairies golden with the grain, 

And over plains reeking with the crimson of battle ; 

Over the cradles which weigh what we create ; 

Over the graves that weigh what we destroy, 

And over the tombs which measure our ignorance. 

And the loneliness of him who wfelks tliis road ! 
For his burden is the light jest of the crowd, 
Tho it is their sorrows that he bears to the light where they 

may see them and hate them. 
While kinsmen and friends are often like the stars. 
Distant, tho set in his heart — 
Those who can heal him 

He offers love which is the whole of him. 
Yet he is often alone, who cannot offer less. 

In every leaf he sees the hand that holds the light of 
the distant goal. 
The world is an ardent thought with him. 
Like the beloved to the one who loves. 
He seeks in every lore that he may love with multitudinous 

mind; 
That his love may be as his being. 
That his being may be infinite. 

wide as the sorrows of earth is the way. 
And wide as the triumph yet to be fulfilled, 
For the wide world is the Road to Godhead. 



The Godman 



The Godman 

I've known the freedom of wings' 

Unconquerable power : 
A flash of the l^ght that flings 

Across eternity the road on which I tower. 

I wade through worlds in fields, 

In streams and over hills. 
I strive, — the cosmos yields 

Me strength till death is what another wills. 

My spirit is with heavens crowned. 

I'm God in all I know, — 
Aye, God of all this round, 

But mortal as decay beneath a brother's blow. 



Giordano Bruno 



Giordano Bruno 

(1548-1600) 

. . . Worlds within worlds and worlds without an end — 

By this light have I found and by naught less can ascend. 

The litanies and dusty pages, spires and roofs 

But slay the witnesses you call to state your proofs. 

No, no my friend confessor. . . I can weep with you, 

But not retract. Alas, alas ! If you but knew 

The wormwood of my grief ! The thousands there will be 

To see my flaming body punish heressy — 

The few there '11 be to make flames with the fallen spark ! 

Even those who call me master shrink into the dark, 

While casuists turn truths to words with which they play. 

Why pay with death to seek God on a darker way ? 
What difference makes the road ? The end is all, 
You say. Ay, were not human blood used in the scrawl 
In which each binding covenant and creed is writ. 
And wrong is sacred truth when life has payed for it. 
Hush friend ! Your words cry to my soul, God lies ! God lies ! 
My inner voice bids me seek truth with living eyes. 
I can but gasp between the inches of your book. 
To have lived long yet meaner than a leaf that shook 
A season 's days where it could taste the open sky. 
And fill its measure in the cosmic harmony. . . , 
I who have dragged my weary flesh from land to land, 
At last a hated fugitive, to understand — 
Ask me not what. The world is too great for a word 
Of mortal mind. We only know the sensed and the inferred, 
I know too well the children of my brain thus born. 
'Tis not for these I weep ; they will but live to mourn 
My ashes murmuring, Here Bruno strove and died 
To prove life 's highest worth is seeking for its Guide. 
And I have toiled to learn whatever may be known, 
To trace the Maker's hand in all that He has sown. 
These prison walls have held me twice ten-hundred days. 
Today my durance ends within the faggot blaze. 



Giordano Bruno 



Thus Rome would silence what I say. But what I find : 
The universe, whose bournes no creed has yet confined, 
Is greater than the wall of terror Rome has built. 
And soon will strengthen with my vital humors spilt 
Upon a martyr's pyre. And by such evidence 
As that a fire makes dust of flesh they would drive hence 
The doubt that truth pays no heed to their credo's line: — 
That their small love and larger hate are not divine . . . 

What ! magnify this ball of discord and despair 
Into the perfect center — Heaven's fondest care. 
And call the heart of this proud Rome which this day cries 
Before the Lord with Joyous praises, Bruno dies ! . . . 
That this one offering, living God, sufficed 
To sooth the anguish of the waiting mangled Christ ! 

You call me ravisher of mankind's simple faith, 
Who sneers at God in known signs, setting up the wraith 
That narcotic theories create to lay my doubts. 
And ask what can that Deity give men who flouts 
Their small desires and smaller fears ? Ah, He who reigns 
Through worlds sowed Godhead in each heart that now con- 
tains 
The dust of small desires. We heed our many wounds. 
Till we seek Heaven most through pain that maims and 

hounds. 
Do grief and tear-blind memories alone teach truth? 
Is triumph less a sacred thing than wailing ruth ? 
You, fearing death, seek God ; and I who looked to birth 
Reached down into the world as roots delve in the earth : 
Obedient as seeds and stars to laws of growth. . . . 
Now, . . . Rome, the fires you kindle -vvill consume us both ! 

I'm helpless as a hope to stem the tide that grows 
With human ills, you say. Ay, vain as thought which goes 
With life, and weak as love when certain death is nigh. 
And that chafes most. Have I toiled but to add a sigh 
To that great empty measure of the world 's parched soul ? 
My name a tiny blood fleck on the Saviours' scroll? . . . 



Giordano Bruno 



Ah, better speak to me of Nola, simple things 
And folks who only know as awful murmurings 
The parent-tragedies we nurse so far away. 
My townsmen, once so proud of me, what will they say? 
Their Padre will construe full many a homily 
To plant a loathing in the hearts once loving me. 
Who fell with too much seeking to eternal death, — 
Perhaps they'll pray that Heaven save me who drew the 

breath 
Of Nola's fields from birth through youth— whose blame 
They knew in everything but suffering and aim. 

Friend, leave me now. My heart is plunged in memory 
Of things which in such hours pay death's grim usury. 
See yonder slender sunbeam on the oozy floor ? 
One hour, two hundred turns between here and the door 
In which to teach the calm of spirit to my flesh, 
And free my being from the last strands of the mesh 
That keeps it bound within the grooves of vital need, 
For I must show my scorn of death so all may read. 



On the Road to Godhead 



On the Road to Godhead 

seers of the light that is joy ! 

seers of the darkness that is grief ! 

ye who know the speech of others ' pain 

Where themselves know but a moan, 

Arise and lead on with your prophet light aloft : 

The light that is the zeal burning for mankind. 

Even as fire is to the stars, be you to us. 

Sing, that the man-born tears of men may be no more. 

Sing, that triumph may be the morrow. 

Sing the craving for new deeds upon the road to Godhead. 

Your music is divinest in the hearts of multitudes. 

Sing the quenching of the blood-lust of wrath, 

Till pure as the white breath of the surf. 

It leaps to the destruction of wrong and ugliness alone : 

And vengeance be no more, 

For death visits vengeance even on baby and saint. 

Sing of the hemispheres, each making what the other 

dreams, 
Even as parent love fulfills the infant during its blind 

growth to mind. 
deep as night will be the wonder of the coming day ! 
Then the races of earth will build them the nation of 

Godmen. 
Assemble, seers of the coming glory. 
Some to chant the triumph far beyond, 
And some to cheer the marchers on the way. 
And some to calm the spirit that it oft may hear the 

universe. 
Others to sing of brotherhood. 
Of joy and youth, of grief and age : 
The mirth of wisdom and folly, 
Of vanished glories sleeping with the dust. 
All to fill the greater day 
For man who is no greater than the hours he fills. 



On the Road to Godhead 



Arise and lead us forth, seers. 
Your symphonists our saints, 
races of antipodes ! 
Our wonderworkers yours, 
O races of all climes ! 

The wet of the same saviors' kisses on us all, 
races of all tongues ! 
Lest the love of man be less kind than the grave ! 



10 Beloved, What Know They Who Smile 



Beloved, What Know They Who Smile 

Beloved, what know they who smile, 

And say, **Ah, you have loved indeed," 

Who do not see thy hand my spirit lead 

Among these fluttering half melodies ? 

They know but words and sounds, not poesies, 

Whose words and sound are vestitures, dust- wrought 

Like brain-husks that enfold the living thought. 

They saw me set before eternities 

That overarch the night, the storms, and seas. 

With trembling wait to hear thy distant voice. 

As flowers wait the touch of spring to rise, 

Nor heard my music-thronged heart rejoice 

As I went forth to thee with swimming eyes, 

And so come nearer, nearer unto God, 

Until, far from the dins of blame and laud, 

I stood before Him and thy love a while. 



Song to One's Unborn Children 11 



Song to One's Unborn Children 

Farewell my darling babes, 

You lacked but flesh and sorrow to be born. 

You had the life which I fed to the dream 

Of great fulfillments. Mine is every thorn 

Of disillusion. But together do we leave 

The world — together sleep where there are none who mourn. 

So I will sing thanksgiving songs, not grieve, 

For no more, no more can my baffled heart redeem 

You from the dust of my departing hour. 

Seeds of my love that never grew to flower, 

Whose pink and tender linking little arms 

Around my neck, whose sweet mouths at my mouth 

Are of the fading dreamt delight that warms 

My heart in passing as with fresh hot tears, 

Would that my soul were nourished by the South 

Where music ne 'er forsakes it till it breaks, 

For it gives thanks that you were never bom. 

Perhaps to swell the nation-choir of scorn 

Of brotherhood, and buy small victories with others' years, 

Or even as I to brood . . . 

Farwell, my darling babes. 



12 Mountain Dusk 



Mountain Dusk 

Mountain dusk, 

World of meandering mist 

Scented with opiate musk 

Of nodding buds dew-kist. 

Voices, voices everywhere, 

Tuned to the whizz of a passing bird. 

Or soft, like long breeze-shaken hair. 

Nowhere cries reminding of the streets, 

But sweet processionals of running winds 

Over mist-wet grass and leaves, 

Where only sick mind grieves 

That knows but what its throbbing wound repeats. 

And for motions that must go unheard ! 

The dimpled ripples' gentle heave and fall 

In tarns that glimmer in the valley nooks. 

Yonder where the trees rise black and tall, 

And clank of fairy anvils in the brook. 

The changing words of mystic meaning scrawled 

Across horizons by the waving boughs 

And all the echoed echoes they have called. 



The Mountain Rill 13 



The Mountain Rill 

Lapidary shaping mountains, 
Toiling on your path of fountains, 
Bringing forth the treasured secrets 
From the granite heart of ages : 
All the Maker's plans and fancies, 

In the building of a planet, singing "Up and build thou 
too!" 

You know neither pause nor leisure, 
But creation's timeless measure. 
Over foam-pearled nooks and crannies. 
On and on with ceaseless laughter, 
Twinkling laughter, tinkling chatter. 

Such as breaks from hearts of babes, and planet-shapers ' 
hearts should know. 

On and on down maze of forest. 
Lead me ever, I want no rest 
But the pause of your sung pauses 
Whirling round some porphyr basin 
Carven by your crystal passing 

Vocal with the shoreless skies, and their white mists noon- 
purified. 

Lyricist of Time's vibrating. 

Singing, "All is in creating. 

No grown splendor lasts forever, 

But must crumble for the shaping, 

Of a higher, fuller wonder: 

Ridges yield to fertile valleys. 

So the nations and the races yield to Gods in brotherhood ! ' ' 

My pulse quivers as I follow 
From the skyland to the hollow. 
Heart too glad for aught but worship 
In your fanes of cloud-washed woodlands, 
Praying, "Fructify my Godhead, 
Here where sorrow calls no gone days, where naught 
ends a song but sleep." 

Today a voice, a flood to-morrow 
Whence green miles of life will borrow 
Their abundance to fulfillment ; 
Mist that stars the miles at twilight ; 
Then a cloud : a womb of thunder. 
Lead! Thy pathway to the ocean is a blending with 
the world. 



14 The Ceoss Builders 



The Cross-Builders 

Your pride is the builder's pride. 

Yet can you house your offspring as the milkweed houses 
its seed ? 

Or imitate the small perfections of a stalk of wheat ? 

Yet these march not across the world with conscious con- 
quering. 

What is your glory, builder? 

Is it the seas of hovels and tenements that house your mul- 
titudes ? 

Your hospitals and prisons that house your stricken? 

Your brothels that house the armies of the life that knows 
no night? 

Your factories that shelter the armies of the dayless life? 

Your forts and barracks that foster the hatreds born in 
your palaces? 

Your sanctuaries of the God who does not bleed when your 
nations do murder in His name ? 

Your schools and libraries that house the gropings of your 
spirit ? 

Your stage where you find yourself in your vices and follies 
and madness, 

And seldom in your star- ward reachings ? 

What is your glory that your parts have more perfection 

than your whole ? 
Your heart beats true as the tides. 
Your eye is true to its light-seeking purpose as a leaf. 
Your muscles answer your every nerve better than you the 

dictates of the God you vow has made all this. 
Your saints are truer to the truths of love and beauty than 

your nations. 
Your moments labor and bring forth from your half life of 

childhood 
The whole life of fertility. 



The Cross Builders 15 



The ripeness of all is as the ripeness of the saint, 
Yet you make barren with crime and disease, 
With hatred, heedlessness, and servitude — 
And call this barrenness of the unfit : 
The crime of creation. 

0, we may rise no higher than the visions of our damned ! 

For they are gathered up by madness and folly 

As the wind gathers up the waves. 

And they know not the voice of deliverance, 

Only the voices of the crafty who speak to their low under- 
standing. 

0, we may rise no higher than the visions of our damned, 

Who need the divinity of the mind-light of all mankind 

To reach the goal of Godhead. 

And seers are sepultured everywhere. 

Often to struggle with much sickness for a little life ; 

With much spirit-craving for a crust ; 

With much need for sordid appropriating who would give 
as gods give. 

Every Brahmin's road is paven with Pariahs 

So Messiahs have becrimsoned the heels of every gilded fool. 

0, we may rise no higher than the visions of our damned, 
For they are the builders of crosses ! 



POSTLUDB 



Postlude 

Be like a cloudless daybreak, breaking of my heart : 

Crowned with the pale night's brightest stars, 

And dawn 's first flames of birth. 

May no clouds come ere I depart 

To realms that lie afar 
Where love, some memory and tears will weigh my worth. 

My joys were but as rainbows formed by morning rays 

Tom by the mist of broken tears. 

Now is my weeping done. 

The rainbows fade, but morning stays 

And grows into the years 
I lived so gladly, making wings to reach the sun. 

Like a bird that fills a hollow with a song at eve, — 

One memory of morning joy. 

Be thou, my passing on. 

Go tell those loving me who grieve, 

That death does not destroy ; 
That they may say. He is not far away though gone. 



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